compromised and, by default, rendered inadequate.97 In a 1997 article, Massingale examined Theological Studies and the Proceedings from the Catholic Theological Society of America dating from the 1940s to the present. He observed the absence of interest regarding racial justice in their regular summaries on important trends and publications in moral theology. As he poignantly pointed out, one would not be aware of the civil rights movement from these sources. When racism was addressed in the theological realm, blacks were often treated as objects of white study, analysis, and charity. In other words, African Americans were rarely seen as agents capable of independent action to better their own situation.98
Massingale’s understanding of racism is largely informed by Bernard Lonergan’s theory of culture. According to Lonergan, “a culture is simply a set of meanings and values that inform the way of life of a community.”99 For Massingale, racism refers to a set of meanings and values “attached to skin color,” and “a way of interpreting skin color differences that pervades the collective convictions, conventions, and practices of American life.”100 Understanding racism as a cultural phenomenon is a key component of Massingale’s thought and is viewed as a necessary way in which to understand racism if one hopes to confront it effectively. As Lonergan stated, “Culture stands to social order as soul to body.”101 Massingale, after incorporating the work of Lonergan, regards culture as a shared group reality that is learned, shapes the identity of a community, and is expressed symbolically.102
Massingale asserts that culture manifests itself in the structural realities of a society. As a result, the American culture of racism and white privilege has produced such atrocities as slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and the exclusion of domestic and agricultural workers (mostly non-white) from the Social Security Act of 1935. These structural manifestations of racism prevented African Americans from acquiring wealth and security in old age, which whites were able to obtain and pass on to their posterity. Consequently, the inequalities of the distant and recent past continue to affect the lives of blacks today. For there to be any reasonable expectation of legitimate redress, American Catholic ethical reflection must espouse structural and systemic approaches to challenge racism. Since culture pervades our society, racism will be eradicated from our culture only when it is seen as “contrary or foreign” to a deeper and more important “cultural ethos.”103 Massingale posits that authentic religious faith can provide a more foundational cultural ethos that can overcome the cultural bedrock on which structural forms of racism are grounded. Racial reconciliation, which is the objective of racial justice, should not result in “the elimination of racial differences, but rather the elimination of the stigma and privilege associated with race.”104
In Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Massingale presents two aspects of African American culture that can augment Catholic social teaching’s concept of distributive justice: the welcome table and the beloved community. These images champion freedom and justice for all persons and all peoples, and offer a formidable threat to the problems of racism, war, and poverty.105 These images are both biblical and require less extrapolation than the regularly used doctrines to promote racial justice: the Fatherhood of God and the Paschal Mystery.
In his 2010 presidential address to the Catholic Theological Society of America, Massingale enlisted Malcolm X as a resource for Catholic theological reflection on racism. Bringing Malcolm into dialogue with Catholic ethics permits Massingale to create an ethical system that is both “authentically black and truly Catholic.”106 One aspect of Malcolm’s thought that Massingale believes still needs to be addressed today is “a profound inner wounding” and demoralization that plagues African Americans.107 This wounding requires healing through “cultural recovery and celebration,” which is often absent in American society and in white churches. Additionally, Massingale incorporates Malcolm in order to illustrate the benefit of bringing African American thought into Catholic ethical dialogue—even that of African Americans who are not always “considered tame or acceptable”(i.e., activists more controversial than Martin Luther King Jr.).108
Essentially, Massingale attests to the need for U.S. Catholic ethicists to “adopt a more structural and systemic approach to racism, one that views this evil primarily as a cultural phenomenon, a culture of White advantage, privilege, and dominance that has derivative personal, interpersonal, and institutional manifestations.”109 The Catholic community can play an integral role in promoting structural changes while at the same time integrating African American practices into its liturgical life, which can address the foundational cultural elements of racism. For Massingale, the retrieval of black sources and the inclusion of the black experience are necessary as a corrective for Catholic racial justice. Although specific recommendations for black agency are more implied than spelled out in his publications, Massingale’s dialogue with African American spirituality and the thought of Malcolm X, as well as his own work to combat racism, evidence the role of black agency in his ethical system.
Jon Nilson
Jon Nilson is arguably the white Catholic theologian most interested in retrieval of black sources and the concept of black agency. His book Hearing past the Pain begins by contrasting the insightful theology of a group of illiterate black slaves during the nineteenth century with that of a scholarly bishop who promoted slavery. The example illustrates for Nilson that all the rich learning and tradition found in the Roman Catholic faith has not prevented the Catholic Church in America from being a racist institution. Nilson avows that the problem with white Catholic theologians is their blindness to contemporary forms of racism and white privilege. He ponders how this can be the case when many of these same theologians have no problem noticing and addressing anti-Semitism, sexism, and classism, even when they are not members of the groups most directly affected. According to Nilson, the racism of white Catholic theologians has taken two forms: (1) ignoring the issue of racism “as a fundamental contradiction of the gospel,” and (2) “marginalizing black theology.”110 Catholic thought on racism must be inclusive of African American thought because no theology is universal or relatively adequate for all times, places, and issues. Nilson takes his own advice to heart by ensuring that his book is imbued with the thought of African Americans, whether they are Catholic or non-Catholic. His black sources include James Baldwin, the black bishops of the United States, Stephen L. Carter, James Cone, Shawn Copeland, Ellis Cose, Cyprian Davis, W. E. B. Du Bois, James H. Evans, Diana L. Hayes, Dwight N. Hopkins, Bryan Massingale, Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Jamie T. Phelps, Cornel West, and Gayraud S. Wilmore. I provide this incomplete list of his African American sources to show that Nilson’s inclusion of black sources is not superficial. Incorporating black thought is particularly important for Nilson, since “most of us [white] Catholic theologians have some vision problems that need correction before we can find the common ground necessary for engagement with black theologians.”111 In a previous article, entitled “Confessions of a White Catholic Racist Theologian,” Nilson stated, “I am a racist insofar as I rarely read and never cited any black theologians in my own publications.”112 Obviously, Nilson has changed his scholarly practices.
Taking his cue from Cone, Nilson wants to underscore that racism should
